Leading homiletician Jared Alcántara offers a practice-centered, collaborative, technologically innovative, next-generation introductory preaching textbook. The book breaks new ground by adopting a practice-based approach to teaching preaching and by using innovative technological delivery to enhance the educational experience of learners. Alcántara introduces the basics of Christian preaching and emphasizes the skills preachers must cultivate throughout their lives. He shows that preachers can learn effective preaching by paying keen attention to five key competencies: conviction, context, clarity, concreteness, and creativity. Featuring the perspectives of a diverse team of collaborators, The Practices of Christian Preaching is designed to prepare effective communicators for the church's multicultural future. Call-outs in the book direct readers to a companion website for further information or practice. The online resources include audio and video sermons, video responses from the author, and contributions from collaborators, enabling Alcántara to coach students by showing them instead of just telling them. A Spanish language edition is also available.

Preachings most able practitioners gather in this book to explore and explain the idea that preaching is a practice that can be taught and learned. Arguing that preaching is a living practice with a long tradition, an identifiable shape, and a broad set of norms and desired outcomes, these noted scholars propose that teachers initiate students into the larger practice of preaching, in ways somewhat like other students are initiated into the practice of medicine or law. The book concludes with designs for a basic preaching course and addresses the question of how preaching courses fit into the larger patterns of seminary curricula.

In Teaching and Christian Practices several university professors describe and reflect on their efforts to allow historic Christian practices to reshape and redirect their pedagogical strategies. Whether allowing spiritually formative reading to enhance a literature course, employing table fellowship and shared meals to reinforce concepts in a pre-nursing nutrition course, or using Christian hermeneutical practices to interpret data in an economics course, these teacher-authors envision ways of teaching and learning that are rooted in the rich tradition of Christian practices, as together they reconceive classrooms and laboratories as vital arenas for faith and spiritual growth.

Preaching, and the discipline of preaching, is at a crossroads. The changing realities of church and theological education, the diversity of our classrooms, and our increasingly complex community contexts leave us in search of tools to help train a rising generation of preachers for a future whose contours are far from clear. The questions are immense: How to support preachers in contexts that are diverse religiously, culturally, and ethnically, both inside and outside the church? How to help students take varied contexts seriously as they are formed as leaders? In Ways of the Word, a dynamic team of master preachers brings much-needed help. Different in race, gender, age, and tradition, both Sally A. Brown and Luke A. Powery speak with one voice their belief that preaching is Spirit-empowered event: an embodied, vocalized, actively received, here-and-now witness to the ongoing work of God in the world. They aspire to help students and preachers alike to reflect on a journey of learning by doing. They aim to help preachers to become more attuned to the Spirit, more adept in preaching’s component skills, and more self-aware about all that is at stake in proclaiming the redemptive work of God in specific contexts.

Much current literature on church worship rarely mentions preaching, and vice versa. Worship is often seen as restricted to music and liturgy while preaching is assumed to operate on different principles for different purposes. But veteran preacher Michael Quicke argues that preaching should be viewed as worship, as both worship and preaching belong within the same Trinitarian dynamic, serving the same purpose and marked by similar characteristics. Drawing on insights from wide-ranging literature and practitioners on both sides of the gap, this insightful book confronts and corrects ten characteristics of preaching that are disconnected from worship.

Preaching is a way of life that can be beautiful and good; however, It can also be anxious, self-focused, and destructive. Preachers and teachers of preaching need a holistic view of preaching that not only paints the way to good preaching, but also to good living. They need a comprehensive practical theology of preaching that combines the ‘why’ and the ‘what’ with the ‘how’ and 'whom’ of preaching. Practicing the Preaching Life unites Christian practices, contextual virtues, and the best of homiletical pedagogy to pave the way to a beautiful preaching life. Preaching is best learned as a formative Christian practice embedded within a web of other Christian practices that form a way of life from which great sermons emerge. Therefore, preaching requires not only a way of speaking well, but also a way of living well. This embedded nature of preaching requires the enrollment of Christian practices in the formation of the preacher and the pursuit of contextual virtues for preaching that avoid cultural relativism on the one hand and cultural imperialism on the other. These requirements lead to a new vision for the preaching classroom, the rhythms of the preaching life, and the definition of what it means to be a good preacher.

Listeners do love their pastors and they agree with the sermon content they hear,' Lori Carrell once explained to a group of pastors, 'but most sermons don't ask for change, and most listeners don't experience spiritual growth as a result of the sermon.' A participant responded: 'Let's get practical. I want my preaching to make a difference. What changes are worth making, and how do I make them?' In Preaching that Matters, Lori Carrell shares answers to that question, drawing on the experiences of thousands of people—preachers and their listeners—whose effort she has studied over many years. In each chapter of this book, she offers research revelations about high impact preaching that will encourage and challenge readers to continue to grow as preachers. She then links these principles with Reflective Practice Challenges (RPCs), exercises that honor the rich experiences of pastors while opening opportunities for self-analysis, spiritual introspection, conversation with a trusted other, or implementation of research-based preaching recommendations. The activities have been used by hundreds of other pastors, and each RPC has been carefully selected for its demonstrated contribution to the process of transforming sermon communication. A selection of the RPCs are available as a downloadable file. E-mail [email protected] for more information. As a communication expert, Carrell approaches preaching from a 'sermon communication' paradigm. She begins with the task of identifying the spiritually transformative purpose of the sermon and then explores exegeting, organizing, deepening, and delivering the sermon, as well as listening to the listeners and planning for continued transformation. Her own goal is simple: to inspire and equip clergy to make changes that will enhance the transformative power of their preaching. To connect with others reading Preaching That Matters and to find an onlne accountability partner, join the book's Google+ communities.